From Snow White to Huckleberry Hound: Animation’s Transition from Theaters to Television in the 1950s

Sandler will explore how, until the late 1950s, reruns of old theatrical cartoons from studios like Terrytoons (Mighty Mouse Playhouse, Farmer Alfalfa), Walt Disney (Disneyland and The Mickey Mouse Club) and Warner Bros. (syndicated Looney Tunes and later The Bugs Bunny Show) dominated the television landscape alongside puppet shows, space patrols, and westerns. Producing new animated shows was simply too expensive. Nevertheless, networks and syndicators still attempted to use original animation to draw large family audiences in the after-school and evening hours. A rich tapestry of animation--what is often referred to as the “golden age”--unwittingly followed with television shows like The Bullwinkle Show, Huckleberry Hound, and Beany and Cecil.